We all know DNA forms the blueprint of life. Through mutation and crossover, genetic information is passed to our children. How exactly this information that builds our bodies, and organises our trillions of cells, each line in our skin, is encoded in our genes is miraculous. Equating our DNA to a "map" of our body, where there would be a one-to-one relationship between genes and cells, makes no sense. Such a map would exceed the territory. The genome is limited to contain a relatively small amount of information. 

Instead, it is better to think of our genetic information as a repository of many highly efficient intertwined strategies, recipes, methods – algorithms, if you will – from which the huge amount of cells that compose our bodies are generated, recursively. These instructions in our DNA are parsed and executed, over and over again, based on local conditions: if this, then do that, or else do this. Genetic information could be considered as a [compressed](https://www.pnas.org/content/117/31/18489) collection of computer programmes, from which life emerges.

It is my conviction that this tension between relative simplicity of computational rules, but enormous complexity in outcome, holds the key to understanding life, and by extension, our aesthetic appreciation of it. We are attracted to visual systems which are to some extent complex, novel, tantalising, yet at the same time contain familiar, repeating elements. Difference and variation, surprise and expectation, have provided essential building blocks in the history of human expression.

To that end, I have developed evolutionary algorithms to research and optimise this trade off. But just as mutations in biology often result in death of specimens, mutations in software often result in programmes that get stuck in an [infinite loop](https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/pub/gzqsnrse/release/8#n2qbnx82rci): the notorious blue screen of death or endless rainbow spinner on MacOS. My engineering challenge was to devise an environment where I could freely let programmes mutate without crippling them. To achieve this, I turned to an existing algorithm called Cartesian Genetic Programming, invented by Julian F. Miller and Peter Thomson in 1997 (see [my interview with Julian](/writing/a-35-billion-year-old-technology-an-interview)) to come to the Mutant Garden software.

In the "Autobreeder" on display in the main room (the "garden") specimens undergo mutation, and siblings are evaluated based on measuring their visual complexity versus cost of computation. Complex compositions that were relatively quick to generate are favoured over simple images that took disproportionate effort. I used the outputs of this algorithm as input for my own aesthetic wetware: I curated, and optimised the highly complex compositions, emphasised desired traits in a painterly, subjective, and labour intensive process.

Some of these works are materialised as digital exposures on photographic paper (lightjet), others are printed on archival paper using UltraChrome inks. These are installed alongside the Autobreeder.

In the smaller room (the "lab"), an additional software work is installed which visualises how the genetic code is formatted as a two-dimensional network, and how this is parsed to generate the layered visual compositions.

On one wall, as a timeline of my larger project of algorithmic archaeology, from each iteration, one work is installed, highlighting my own artistic practice as a genealogy as well.

To conclude, a series of light emitting tablets connect the various algorithms, series, works by myself, by other contemporary artists, and historical art movements. These help me define my activities in a broader artistic and historical frame, and appreciate associations in their own right.
    
– Harm

Mutant Garden

My work Markov's Window will be part of the permanent collection display of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. It will be installed as a "transhistorical intervention" into BASE, the modern section of the display, where it will be in close proximity to sections on Bauhaus, Mondriaan, and the Russian Avant-garde. According to the museum: "It will thus be the only contemporary work in this section of BASE, which will give it a unique emphasis. This positioning will be a strong statement, intertwining such a forward-thinking digital work within the canon of abstraction."

On display from the 22nd of September 2020.


Stedelijk Base

left gallery took residence in brick and mortar public art institution Stroom Den Haag.

left gallery is an online platform that produces and sells works of art as downloadable objects. These objects exist in limited editions, available for purchase. once purchased, buyers receive a cryptographic ‘token’ as proof of ownership. 

In rite of access, this token mechanism creates the conditions to access the works on display: engagement of visitors, such as purchases and social media activity operate as a stream of credit, which allow the works to remain on view. Follow left gallery on twitter or subscribe to the mailinglist, and the time to see the complete works increases; unlike its pages, and access may be denied. A purchase made through left gallery anywhere in the world extends the display of the works at stroom den haag. So long as sufficient credit remains, visitors can access all works within the project.

Exhibition design by Laurel Schwulst

left gallery: rite of access



For the solo exhibition Uninnocent Bystander, Harm van den Dorpel presents his newest iteration of works that explore the dynamics of algorithmic architectures.

In this extended work, initially labeled “Death Imitates Language”, a set of originary images are combined and recombined via a genetic algorithm to generate new sets of “descendant” images. The latest “generation” of images were birthed as a result of tinkering by van den Dorpel with the underlying combinatorial algorithm. To overcome the size restrictions imposed by creating works using a linear chromosome as a primary reference point (which is how genetics function in nature), van den Dorpel turned to a hierarchical form of organization which he encountered in the analysis of natural human language.

To create the newest series the artist borrowed from what is known as “Cartesian Genetic Programming”. CGP allows for programming code to mutate, in order to create a broad variation among many syntactically valid, and potentially meaningful, programmes. This technology from 1999 has mostly been superseded by neural networks, which power today’s most powerful artificial intelligence.

Van den Dorpel’s works concern themselves with the dynamics of progression and halting - one of the animating questions of early computational science. Whether or why a given process or programme ever completes underwrites inquiries that stretch beyond the realms of computing and penetrate every aspect of social and biological endeavour. Such processes are only partially understandable - indeed the famous Turing Machine provided a formalisation of the nature of undecidability with regard to the halting problem, demonstrating that it would never be possible to know the status of all potential computing programmes.

Despite the melancholic epistemological implications, such uncertainty provides considerable scope for growth and surprise. This lack of closure is something that van den Dorpel frequently celebrates in his work, arguing against the notion of the artwork as a finalised object subject to the sort of Groysean archiving that amounts to a kind of death sentence for a given piece.

Instead, van den Dorpel seeks to explore the tensions between creation and recognition. The artist may set certain processes in motion, but the motion has interests and consequences of its own. Thus, his works are environments as much as they are objects: evolving to produce specific states at specific moments, but they are never complete. The works are snapshots of a joint creative endeavour between van den Dorpel and the logics he engages, and which engage him.


Uninnocent Bystander

Group exhibition with work by Forensic Architecture, Cao Fei, Rachel Ara, Zach Blas, Simon Denny, Chris Shen, Sylbee Kim, Woonghyun Kim and Harm van den Dorpel.

Vertiginous Data

Group sculpture exhibition at narrative projects, London. Works by Teresa Braula Reis, Braco Dimitrijevic, Harm van den Dorpel, Marte Eknæs, Carlos Noronha Feio, and Anton Ginzburg. 

Notes on Objects

"Proof of Work" brings together works engaged with the culture around cryptocurrency, bitcoin and blockchain as a possible new infrastructure for money, computing and organizing. This includes artwork made by crypto builders, crypto experiments built by artists, and paintings and drawings that resonate with cryptocurrency but predate the invention of bitcoin. 

Curated by Simon Denny in dialogue with Distributed Gallery, Harm van den Dorpel, Sarah Hamerman and Sam Hart, Kei Kreutler, Aude Launay and Anna-Lisa Scherfose

Proof of Work

A group exhibition with work by GALA Committee, Felice Grodin, Nicolas Lobo, Jillian Mayer, Harm van den Dorpel, and others.

As our digital and analog worlds continue to merge, we are only beginning to understand the profound effects this change is having on our society. How then, might we use art to understand how the internet is shaping our lives? How does art move through that digital space – and what does that mean for an artwork’s value?

Oolite Arts’s new exhibition, E-State Realisms explores these and other issues emerging in the digital age. It’s departure point is a pre-Internet phenomenon that set the stage for these challenges. The exhibition starts with rarely-exhibited works by the GALA Committee, the artist collective created by conceptual artist Mel Chin in the 1990s. The collective flooded the popular soap opera Melrose Place with artworks as props in disguise. These works were later traded at auction with this broadcast value factored in. In doing so, the collective demonstrated how narrative and value had foreclosed on one another. The popularity of this soap opera not only proved how value was transferred on to an artwork, it perpetuated the postmodern logic that the meaning of art is constructed by viewing.

The internet has since amplified the reach of media beyond broadcast radio and TV into a global marketing megastructure — a new architecture of information. Artworks are now made to exist in two realms: the physical one from which they originate, and the digital one in which they continue to circulate globally. This digital manifestation of the object becomes a negation of the artwork, precisely because it creates a system of value based on circulation, not proximity or ownership. This paradigm suggests a shift toward a new art ecology, one where art depends on the reproduction and distribution in the marketplace for its sustenance. Complicity is inevitable for all involved: the artist, curator, institution and spectator alike.

The pieces in this exhibition, which begins with a GALA Committee work, tackle a range of topics from blockchain, to luxury real estate and e-commerce. Some are documents of pieces that exist purely online. Together, they seek to peel back a layer of our world, and use artistic interventions to demonstrate how digital landscapes shape our everyday reality.

E-State Realisms

I Was Raised on the Internet focuses on how the internet has changed the way we experience the world. Due to new types of gaming and entertainment and the rise of social media and alternative modes of representation, the everyday is no longer what it used to be. The ways we interact with each other have shifted through the connected nature of telecommunications devices across the internet, including mobile applications, social media platforms, and large search engines that have become everyday tools for individuals from all walks of life. New modes, not only of seeing but also of feeling, have emerged in response to this.

I Was Raised on the Internet documents a specific moment in time, beginning with 1998 and extending to the present, and focuses on the shifts that have occurred since the millennium. The nearly 100 works in the exhibition span photography, painting, sculpture, film, and video, as well as emerging technologies and interactive elements, which include interactive computer works and virtual reality. Among these are new adaptations of major bodies of work, as well as new commissions from some of the most significant artists working with these ideas today.

The exhibition seeks to put into language the idea of the “millennial’”—in the truest sense of the word—extrapolating the terms used by artists and creative practitioners in relation to the internet, including the so-called post-internet phenomenon. Fittingly, the viewer is an active agent, engaging new forms of networked behavior and participating both in the gallery space and beyond, through additional digital works hosted online. I Was Raised on the Internet plays with the dystopic connotations of our online multiverse but also is a direct reaction to the utopic beginnings of the world of computing.

The exhibition comprises five sections, each describing a different mode of interaction between the viewer and the art object: Look at Me considers new, more fluid forms of identity that have flourished in a world where social media has led to a performance of the self and a networking with others. Touch Me traces the limits of translating information and digital images into real space. This chapter focuses on art’s fluid boundaries between two- and three-dimensions, and addresses the ways individuals are increasingly seeing touch and sensuality as entirely new constructs in the world of the internet. Control Me addresses the pervasive culture of surveillance and data collection that network technology enables. How do we create a visual vocabulary for state control, and what future can this vocabulary enable for us as citizens? Play with Me documents the ways in which art grapples with the move toward immersive and interactive technologies developing today, in which the visitor is not merely a passive viewer but an active agent in the work. Finally, Sell Me Out focuses on corporate culture and consumerism. Artists take up ideas from marketing, such as brand identity, with a critical eye to expose, critique, and participate in our late capitalist landscape, and to imagine new futures for the labor of buying and selling. Additionally, viewers can access each section’s online works through an exhibition website.

https://mcachicago.org/Exhibitions/2018/I-Was-Raised-On-The-Internet

 I Was Raised on the Internet

In his first solo exhibition with Upstream Gallery, Harm van den Dorpel features works from multiple series’ that react to different moments in the history of cybernetics.

Pattern and Presence, the title of the show, is taken from the book ‘How we became posthuman’ by N. Katherine Hayles (1999), in which she describes the historical development of cybernetics and politics of disembodiment.

Van den Dorpel employs various information technologies from this history of cybernetics in his artistic practice. He wants to demystify both the romantic notion of the ‘artistic genius’ as well as the ‘black box’ of computer algorithms, which increasingly influence our personal lives and forecast our political future. Where other traditional artistic mediums require the artist to create the work with their own hand, Van den Dorpel rather programs software and trains it by looping continuous feedback through its output in order to produce works with unpredictable aesthetic outcomes. In this hybrid process, genetic properties are ascribed to the elements and composition that make up his artworks. By selecting and crossbreeding across many generations, “optimal” artworks emerge.

For this new series of printed transparent work (which is a continuation of his earlier series “Death Imitates Language”) Van den Dorpel focuses on the structure of ‘nesting’: a strong organizing principle found in architecture, software development and human language. The artist draws on this system in order to compare the construction of language to the construction of artworks, and in doing so, refers to the painterly question of how to fill the two-dimensional plane using composition and layering. The genetic algorithms he uses, originate from developments in computer science which emerged in the 1960s through to the 1980s and include: ‘Turtle graphics’ by Seymour Papert (late 1960s); research of feedback, reflexivity, nesting and recursion (Autopoiesis, Varela & Maturana, 1972); and Artificial Life (Christopher Langton, 1986).

Van den Dorpel also draws on recent developments in blockchain technology, specifically the Ethereum blockchain, in order to assign each work a unique identifier (a hash or fingerprint). This functions as a token which can be traded on the Ethereum blockchain and changes the status of the artwork to a form of currency – or a representation of itself – which circles back to the initial question of embodiment: are the works in fact the works? Or, are they representations of an external, less material essence? 

Pattern & Presence

narrative projects is pleased to present Asking for a friend by Harm van den Dorpel. For his second solo show with the gallery, the artist proposes a selection of recent works from multiple series of semi-algorithmically generated work. Besides wall works, which function as preliminary material conclusions, software from which the work emerged is also on display.

The expression ‘asking for a friend’ is used when the person asking feels embarrassed and  pretends  to  be  asking  for  somebody  else.  The  subject  that  poses  the  sensitive question  introduces  an  imaginary  constructed  proxy  onto  which  feelings  of  shame  or guilt might be projected.

Similarly,  Harm  van  den  Dorpel  does  not  create  his  work  directly  himself.  Rather,  he devises software, which stands in for him, raising questions about artistic agency and identity in our era of artificial intelligence and increased automation.

Underlying the most recent works are "tree” shaped chromosomes. The use of a tree as a recursive structure is derived from his interest in natural language analysis, such as the X-bar theory of Noam Chomsky. The artist asserts that in human language, the essentialmeaning of a word is indefinitely deferred, and can only be approximated by taking into account the definitions of all the other words that it is not.

Harm’s  software  simulates  biological  processes such  as  learning,  reproduction  and growth.  Each  artwork  has  virtual  chromosomes,  parents  and  relatives.  Using evolutionary and genetic algorithms he crossbreeds pieces, emphasising desired traits and eliminating unwanted aesthetics, akin to the process of breeding dogs or flowers. By ascribing  anthropomorphic  properties  to  the  works,  they - according to the artist -become more alive and gain a sense of autonomy.

He trains his software by judging and recombining its generated output, which happens over  many  generations.  Through  this  feedback  loop  the  population  evolves.  Multiple factors  such  as  promiscuity,  fertility  and  interconnectedness  of  specimen  inform  the artist’s  decision  as  to  whether  or  not  a  work  is  contingently  ‘fit’  enough  to  be materialised. In this possibility space, the final works are haunted by the eliminations of all the potential pieces that were not meant to be.

Asking for a Friend

Group exhibition with work by Olga Balema, Alice Channer, Thea Djordjadze, Harm van den Dorpel, Krištof Kintera, Martin Kippenberger, Hito Steyerl, Barthélémy Toguo and Erwin Wurm. Curated by Heinrich Dietz and Harald Kunde.

Presented are 6 wall pieces, multi layered UV prints with white channel between CNC-cut plexiglass, packing material, screw system, unique editions, each 100×100×4cm, and an animated software work, showing the entire genealogy. 

Wer nicht denken will, fliegt raus

Initiated by Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Director of the Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art (MAK), the exhibition includes four participating curators and six exhibition projects in venues like Kunsthalle Wien, the University of Applied Arts, and the Architekturzentrum.

Vienna Biennale

When the computer game Quake came out in 1996, I was impressed by its haunting 3D graphics.  More importantly, it featured a soundtrack composed by Trent Reznor. This would be the first time my love for software development and pop culture collided. Being a programmer had become legit.

The disc that contained the game would also play in the CD player of my friend’s car. While driving stoned as teenagers the flatlands of rural Holland would transform into a FPS level with fewer demons.

In 2008 I stumbled upon Trent's continued ambient explorations on the website archive.org. Trent had uploaded a substantial series of numbered tracks labelled 'Ghosts'. These were even better than his Quake soundtrack. Less violent, more fragile and experimental. The tracks were released under a Creative Commons License, and can still be downloaded for free.

Creative Commons, among other technologies dear to me, such as Markdown and RSS, were developed with involvement of internet hacktivist Aaron Swartz. Swartz committed suicide after he was indicted for data>theft of a large portion of the JSTOR academic papers database, which he might have wanted to release in a Wikileaks>esque manner. A regular account for JSTOR costs 200 dollar per year, restricting the majority of mankind to benefit from often tax funded scientific research. He would have gotten 35 years+.

A few months after Aaron's death, Google announced they would discontinue their hugely popular product Google Reader: a web application to read RSS feeds.

RSS is a simple protocol that helps people to subscribe to updates from websites (blogs) in a uniform manner, similar to how you read email. It organizes information into fixed chunks such as a title, text and some images. It was a promising step towards a structured (semantic) web, but I guess that delivering pure content, stripped from noise such as advertisements, was not compatible with Google’s monetization strategies.

In a comparable but opposite attitude of disdain for convenience, Germans prefer cash. Seldom have I experienced such resistance to debit and credit cards, which might explain Germany's relative prosperity in Europe: contain the impulse. After handing my metal coins, I receive a thin strip of paper as receipt. The numbers are not printed with ink but heated, and when not treated carefully, they wash out, causing great despair to my tax advisor.

These new works, made of large sheets of thermosensitive paper, mounted on canvas, resemble paintings. My traces are engraved with hot air and I barely touched their surface. Their provenance resides in a ghostly transaction, timestamped in the supposedly perpetual blockchain, our only hope.

I’m chatting with Harm van den Dorpel. I’m wearing the sweater my mom knitted for me, 12 years ago, the black one with a grey Nine Inch Nails logo on it. I’m too fresh for my haters. I’m asking pushy questions, I’m trying 2 understand.

Harm has a Wikipedia page. Harm is 33-34 years of age. Wikipedia calls him a ‘conceptual artist’. What the fuck does that mean in 2015?

[Madonna:]
Come on boy I’ve been waiting for somebody to pick up my stroll

[Justin:]
Now don’t waste time, give me desire, tell me how you wanna roll

Harm has chosen me to write about his work because I seem like someone who hates the art world, a post-artist, someone who has decided to give up. I’m trying to gauge if he wants me to tear his practice apart. I’m trying to figure out what that would mean. Is it BDSM?

The title of the show, Just In Time, reminds me of ‘Justin’ and ‘In Time’, Timberlake’s flop star turn in the 2011 dystopian Sci-Fi thriller. Like all Sci-Fi movies it was about the time when it was made. In the film time is literally money. You buy and sell your minutes, your years. The rich have more time. The usual, then. NYC.

[Madonna and Justin:]
If you want it
You’ve already got it
If you thought it
It better be what you want

I think the show is ‘about’ programmer workflows and how they are visualized in corporate environments. Charts and drawings and post-its and mind maps and shit.

Harm:
the aim of the text is not to make sure people will want to see the show
i think it should be more about giving context
im very very confused about being an artist as you might have noticed in the chats

Jaakko:yeah
i’m confused about it too, like my ‘practice’

Harm:
on the verge of quitting all the time

I’m scrolling up this Facebook chat window. We’ve been chatting about the press release a lot. What can be said? Nothing has been said, almost. Harm’s responses are evasive (elusive?), which might be fine. I feel like my role is to understand and report back, but maybe that’s not necessary. I’m kinda over understanding tbh. I’m into being near something. I don’t really get Harm’s work. I can be near it though.

[Madonna:]
You gotta get em a heart
Tick tock tick tock tick tock

“Men always want to be influential. I see that somewhat as an onlooker. Do I see myself as influential? No, I want to understand. If others understand in the same way I’ve understood that gives me a sense of satisfaction, like being among equals.”– Hannah Arendt

Harm:
i think thats the point of doing it
putting some thoughts and ideas there, and then see what other people think about
that
thats the thrill
in this quote of hers, im not on the side of the ‘men'.

Harm has introduced this quote into our chat. He is onto something. I immediately challenge him in a predictable way, pointing out that Hannah Arendt was massively influential and accomplished, that this humility rings false.

We start talking about failure and I paste a quote about how failure exhibited is reframing it as a success and somehow really neoliberal or something. I’m trying to be analytical and sharp but I’m kinda worn down and foggy.

Harm van den Dorpel’s work is about language, process and infrastructure. When he makes images they are about other images. They’re like lol what is an image anyways.

[Justin:]
But if I die tonight at least I can say I did what I wanted to do
Tell me how ‘bout you?

“There are various ways to become invisible: one is to become transparent; another is to put up an opaque shield. Neither tactic is fully realizable.”
– Elvia Wilk

Harm:
one way is to be like a chameleon and mimic your environment
then people also dont see you

I think I kinda want what Harm wants but I’m using opposite methods. He wants to be invisible so as not to be influential, to not be one of the men. He wants to understand. He has chosen an opaque shield. Maybe the shield changes color according to its surroundings. It’s online and off. I’m trying to be transparent.

Harm:
i tried to read agamben
and he says something interesting about absolute potentiality
which means
decide to rather not do anything
i just in general feel incapable of expressing in art pieces the stuff that really interests me

Two things stick out to me. First of all I’m like wait are you reverse psychologizing me to legitimize your practice for you by saying that it has nothing to do with what really interests you? Then I’m like wait how does not doing anything work up to absolute potentiality.

Harm:
maybe im trying to legitimize my focus on process, thought and all other aspects of creation that happen _before_ actually creating something substantial and possible to communicate . maybe decide in the end to leave it unrealized, unactualized, uncommunicated
because the incentives to actually make something are unclear to me - because they are so wound up in other processes. like market stuff, and who’s going to see it anyway?

[Madonna and Justin:]
If you want it
You’ve already got it
If you thought it
It better be what you want
If you feel it
It must be real just
Say the word and
I’m gonna give you what you want

[Justin:]
We only got four minutes to save the world

– Jaakko Pallasvuo, 2015


Exhibitions